Disclaimer: I do not own Veronica Mars!
Seeing the Wizard
Veronica always spoke of how Lilly Kane shaped her life, pre and post murder. Sometimes she muses on how Logan and Duncan helped shaped her as well. She never stops to think that maybe she's helped shape who they are, who they were.
She thinks the answer is easy. Logan thinks she abandoned them and was possibly hurt. Possibly hurt enough to start on the endless crusade of torturing her. He doesn't stop to think that she tortures herself the most.
Duncan broke up with her. She thinks she must have had done something to warrant that reaction. What reaction? The lack of reaction? So after Lilly died, nothing changed. She did something to Duncan to warrant him ignoring her.
But Veronica doesn't think about how she changed their lives. She doesn't like to think about how they changed her life either. She doesn't like to think about anything, really. Everything just hurts. Her chest feels like a balloon overfilled with helium and ready to burst, always. She looks up a lot, or stares into space or at her shoes. She's not willing to cry, ever again. It's not a mystery why she likes to get lost in mysteries.
Lilly was her best friend. But the Lilly that was her best friend was not the same as the Lilly who was Duncan's sister or the same as the Lilly who was Logan's girlfriend. The Lilly Kane, the one that Veronica knew, was tame. She was wholesome and fearless. Lilly was adventurous but tame. She took chances but held herself back. Veronica wasn't really a risk taker, so Lilly held back and settled for childish naïve fun. Veronica was naïve.
Veronica closes her eyes at night and sees Duncan sitting out front rocking back and forth in a catatonic state. She remembers so vividly going up to him, asking him what was wrong. She remembers kneeling in front of him, worried. She isn't surprised by his lack of emotion. He'd been nothing but cold since their lack of breakup. But, what she remembers the most about him that night, is how his eyes didn't make contact. Not with her, not with anything. They appeared glazed, medicated. Veronica remembers the feeling of her heart falling into the pit of her stomach. She went in search of her best friend.
Lilly's eyes were open. They were focused on the footprints of her killer. There was blood, but Veronica doesn't remember that, specifically. She remembers being overwhelmed with tears. She remembers her breath constricting in her lungs. Veronica remembers most of all the feeling of dread. Her best friend was dead. Is. Is dead. Because no matter what tense she writes in, Lilly will always be dead.
That night Veronica tried to sleep. Her mother offered her a drink, a good old fashioned vodka tonic. A little nightcap to make the nightmares go away. Instead, Veronica gets in her car and drives to the mall. She was thinking of Lilly, and she ended up at the mall. She called Logan, he answered on the first ring.
"She's really gone isn't she?" He was teetering between denial and hysterics.
"I figured if you called, then it was really true." And he broke down, and she broke down. They spent the whole night crying over the cell phone. The next time he spoke to her, he was calling her a traitor.
Her dad lost his job, her mother left town, she gets… (does it matter?), and her friends are not her friends. And somewhere between Shelley Pomroy's party and her new haircut, she was no longer the Veronica Lilly Kane was best friends with.
This Veronica knows. She's hardened, she's seen the wizard. She refuses to ever been seen as the weak, pitiful Veronica who was nothing without Lilly Kane. She was always just a shadow, a naïve little shadow that Lilly wanted to corrupt. But maybe, if Veronica bothered to look past the obvious. Maybe she'd consider the possibility that Lilly was her friend because Lilly needed to be held back. Everything seems selfish. Veronica is selfish. Duncan is selfish. Logan is selfish. But Lilly is the most selfish of them all, because she isn't here, mourning her own death. And if she was…selfish.
Duncan hurt her. But the new Veronica is over that. The new Veronica can't be hurt. And Logan. His insults, his tricks, his pranks, his pathetic attempt to make her feel guilty it just helps. She takes it in, absorbs it, and her shell hardens more and more.
The new Veronica, she's been shaped by her environment. She can't be hurt. She can't crack. She talks back to authority figures, because they can't hurt her, they don't have the authority to hurt her. (Only Lilly can hurt her, and Lilly hurts her.) She meets insult with insult. She's the product of her environment, an environment that spreads rumors, mostly of her spreading her legs. It doesn't hurt her, it can't hurt her. If it stings she stings back. The new Veronica can't be hurt, Lilly would be so sad, the new Veronica is invincible.
Except that she's not. 'Cause everyday her thick exterior cracks down. The debris piles on the dirt. The debris is the dirt, and Veronica is left unprotected and incredibly hurt rolling around in the pain she caused.
End.